Natural Ordermage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  A mage-guard was working there with two of the women guards on hand-to-hand tactics, but when he saw Taryl and Rahl, he said something to them and walked toward Taryl.

  “Khaill, this is Rahl. I mentioned him to you.”

  “You did.” Khaill resembled Magister Zastryl in bearing and in general size, but Khaill was older, with a worn and rugged countenance and fine limp brown hair. He was also stockier. He studied Rahl for several moments. “So… you’re an exile, a merchanting clerk, a loader, and now a mage-clerk?”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl met the mage-guard’s glance evenly, without challenge, but without looking away. “You prefer the truncheon, I hear.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Khaill walked to the side of the exercise room and returned with a truncheon similar to the one that Rahl bore. “I would like you only to defend against my attacks.”

  With those words, he immediately jabbed his truncheon toward Rahl.

  Rahl slid-parried and sidestepped, not wishing to give ground, then blocked the return strike, giving a half step, then moving forward to the left.

  Khaill offered two quick thrusts in succession, and Rahl beat both aside, continuing to move, first to one side, then the other, not allowing the mage-guard to force him toward a wall.

  After another series of engagements, Khaill was fractionally slower in recovering, and Rahl managed to step in and catch the other’s half guard with enough force to jerk Khaill forward slightly. Rahl did not take the opportunity to strike, but beat Khaill’s truncheon down almost to the floor, stepping on it for a moment, before dancing back, and then parrying the uppercutting strike

  Khaill stepped up his attacks, but Rahl wove a defense effective enough that none of the mage-guard’s blows came close to striking other than Rahl’s truncheon.

  After a time, Khaill stepped back. “That will do.”

  Rahl also moved back and blotted the dampness off his forehead.

  “You have only recovered a small fraction of your order-skills, Taryl says. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  The stocky arms-mage nodded. “Even so, your skills with the truncheon are more than adequate. Can you handle a falchiona?”

  “I used to be able to… for a short time.”

  “Pick one out.” Khaill gestured toward a rack set against the west wall. “Then put on one of the heavy jerseys.”

  Rahl studied the blunt-edged weapons in the rack, hefted one, then another. Although all of them felt somehow wrong, he finally selected the one that felt the most balanced in his hand. Was that wrongness because he was regaining some slight ability to sense order and chaos? The heavy jersey he struggled into had thin plates set in what looked to be shimmersilk and stitched over a padded woolen tunic. He was sweating even more heavily by the time he walked back to where Khaill waited, holding a falchiona similar to the one Rahl had selected.

  “I don’t want you to attack here, either. Just defend.”

  Khaill’s weapon was clearly the blade, and Rahl felt far more awkward with the falchiona, but he managed to deflect most of the attacks, although Khaill did manage to strike the plates on his right shoulder twice. One would have been crippling in a real fight, although the other would only have been glancing.

  The arms-mage stepped back. “Now, try to defend with the truncheon.”

  Rahl fared far better using the truncheon against the falchiona, although it was shorter than a blade, but that sparring only went on for a short time before Khaill once more stepped back.

  “Interesting.” Khaill nodded. “You can go, Rahl. I would like a few words with Taryl.”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl struggled out of the practice jersey/armor as quickly as he could and hurried from the exercise room.

  Once outside the training chamber door, which he did not fully close, he slowed almost to a halt, listening and hoping to overhear what might be said.

  “… if he didn’t have that hint of order all the. way through,” said Khaill in a quiet voice, “I’d have said he’d been trained as a bravo.”

  “In a way, he was… Reduce armsmasters, he said. He might do well in time, perhaps in a port city…”

  “… don’t know where you find them, Taryl…”

  “… where I can… where I must… there are never enough.”

  Taryl’s words would have chilled Rahl… except that the conversation suggested that Rahl might have a future away from Luba.

  LXXIV

  On fiveday, Taryl caught Rahl as he was leaving the mage-guards’ mess at breakfast and drew him aside.

  “Have you been studying the Codex and the Manual?”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl had, particularly since he’d gotten his own copy and returned Taryl’s, although he had noted which sections of the mage-guard’s Manual had been the most perused.

  “What is the one fundamental necessity for any land to survive?”

  Rahl knew what he thought, but that wasn’t what Taryl wanted, and he had to quickly think back on what was in the Manual of the Mage-Guards. “The need to maintain order, ser.”

  “What is the role of the Triad?”

  “To assure that order is maintained and chaos is used only for just and lawful purposes, ser…”

  “Why are all mages, except healers, forbidden to engage in commerce?”

  Rahl remembered the prohibition, but he did not recall any reason being stated for it, other than the fact that mage-guards were not to take advantage of their position. “Because they could use their abilities and position to personal advantage?”

  “They certainly could,” Taryl replied dryly. “Why shouldn’t they? Everyone else in the world does.”

  “Because they represent the Emperor,” Rahl guessed. “If they represent him, they have to be impartial and above reproach, and if they get into commerce, they can’t be either?”

  Taryl nodded slowly. “Simple as that seems, a goodly proportion of mage-guard trainees have trouble with understanding it.”

  “But… ser… if those with order- or chaos-talents cannot be other than mage-guards or healers, but a number don’t understand that… ?” Rahl wasn’t quite sure how to finish the question.

  “What happens to them? They’re put in places where there’s no temptation, like Luba, or the quarries, or Highpoint station, or the Afrit rubber plantations, or the mines.” Taryl nodded. “That’s enough for now. I’ll be examining you at any time from here on. The questions will get harder.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Now… go get your truncheon. Talanyr and Rhiobyn will do the copying today. You’ll be accompanying Grawyl. He’s one of the mage-guards who deals with loaders and breakers. You won’t ever be a primary mage-guard here, because you don’t handle chaos, but you need to see how they work. Grawyl knows that. Meet him at the duty desk.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Rahl hurried back to his room, grabbed his truncheon, and made his way to the station wing of the building. Grawyl, whom he knew by sight, but not by name, was waiting. He was big—a good head taller than Rahl, broader in the shoulders, and his brilliant green eyes, black eyebrows, and short-cut black beard gave him a menacing impression.

  “So you’re the one Taryl reclaimed from the loaders. They didn’t call you Rahl there, I’d wager.”

  “No, ser. Blacktop. That was before I got my memory back.”

  “Blacktop… Blacktop… oh, you were one of the quiet scary ones… ready to explode all the time, but you never did after the first time. Bushy black beard, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Rahl didn’t remember exploding, only that there had been a time of heat and pain.

  “I remembered you, and that means you shouldn’t have made it.” Grawyl laughed good-naturedly. “But then, one way or another, most of us here shouldn’t have survived.” He turned, expecting Rahl to follow him out to the wagons.

  Rahl did, taking his place in the second seat beside Grawyl.

  “Ready, ser?” asked the driver.

  �
��Ready.” Grawyl didn’t look at Rahl while he continued. “We’ll move from crew to crew. We check with the overseers. Some of them can spot trouble before it happens, and some don’t know why something happened even afterward, Most of those don’t last.”

  “What happens to them?”

  “They get killed, or hurt—or they end up as workmen or something like it. There’s always a need for someone.”

  As they sat in the mage-guard wagon that carried them northward through the already-hot morning air, Grawyl continued. “Only one rule here, really. Don’t threaten. Just act. Threats mean nothing. But don’t act unless you’re sure of why you’re acting.”

  Ahead of them, to the northwest, under the thin and hazy gray clouds, the air above the massive blackened furnaces shimmered and wavered from the heat radiated from the furnaces. Only the faintest hint of a breeze touched Rahl’s face.

  “Some mage-guards have a hard time remembering that the loaders and breakers, and even the sloggers,” Grawyl went on, “are men. They do a job. If we hurt them, especially if we kill them, we’ve hurt someone, and we need a good reason. On top of that, there’s one less to do the job. So, one of our jobs is not only to provide a stronger form of discipline than the overseers, but it’s also to watch the overseers, to make sure that they don’t abuse their power.”

  “In a way, you’re protecting the workers, then.”

  “Who else do they have?” asked Grawyl.

  For a moment, the only sounds were those of the creaking of the wagon and the rumbling crunching of the iron tires on the grit on the paving stones of the road.

  “I try to avoid following a routine when I’m doing the inspections. That way, no one knows exactly when I’ll be in any one spot. It’s better that way. We’ll be starting close to the middle of the coking furnaces. The overseer supervisor says that the loader crew on coking furnace three needs looking at.”

  The wagon began to climb the lower section of the road along the top of the short ridge to the east of the line of coking furnaces. Rahl glanced westward at the first furnace, a squat structure whose metal and once-yellow bricks had merged into a dark and dingy gray. A crew of loaders stood waiting by the dock as a team of sloggers pulled a coal wagon into place.

  Farther westward, he could see the dark figures of breakers working on the slag outside the blast furnaces and more loaders at the base of the slag piles shoveling broken slag into wagons. The clinking of shovels barely rose over the distance-muted roaring cacophony of furnaces and mills.

  When the wagon pulled off into a turnout short of the loading dock above the third coking furnace, Rahl followed Grawyl up the slope to a point just above the dock and coal wagon. From there, Rahl just looked at a loader crew—six bearded and sinewy men with shovels in ragged heavy trousers and armless canvas semitunics, their skin darkened and weathered by seasons of exposure to sun and heat. Their bodies and arms moved in rough unison as they scooped, turned, and shoveled the chunks of coal from the wagon into the chute that led down to the coking furnace. Even from fifteen cubits away, Rahl didn’t recognize any of the loaders.

  The second man in line paused, just slightly, but enough to throw off the rhythm of the loaders, and the third man growled under his breath. The overseer’s lash flicked out—twice.

  The second man didn’t move, just took the lash, and struggled to fit his shoveling into the pattern of the others.

  The third growled more loudly, muttering something to the second man.

  Rahl thought he sensed something about the second man, but the feeling vanished even as he tried to identify it.

  “Hold!” snapped Grawyl.

  The overseer raised his whip but did not actually use it. “Stand and rest!”

  Rahl could see the relief in the second man—that and a thin line of blood across his upper right arm. The third loader bore no obvious mark of the lash, but the stiffness of his body betrayed anger and rage.

  Had that been what Grawyl had meant about him?

  Grawyl stepped toward the line of loaders, and Rahl followed, but kept a half pace back of the mage-guard.

  Once more, Rahl caught a flash of something like chaos, but not exactly, from the second loader in line. What was it? Then he almost shook his head. It was wound chaos of some sort, and it was strong, but his order-skills were still so unreliable that he hadn’t been able to recognize it from farther away.

  “Ser…” he said quietly, “the second loader is ill. I can’t tell how, but he is.”

  “Thank you. I had that feeling from the way he moved.” Grawyl turned toward the overseer. “Send the second man there to the sick barracks. He’s not well enough to handle a shovel, and it’s slowing the crew.”

  “Yes, ser.” The overseer’s tone was flat, not quite contemptuous.

  Grawyl turned toward the man. “If you don’t watch out more for your crews, I’ll have you take his place as a loader.”

  The overseer blanched beneath his olive skin. “Yes, ser. I will, ser.”

  Grawyl said nothing, just stepped away and headed back toward the smaller wagon. Rahl followed.

  LXXV

  It is always best when people do what they should because they choose to do so. Out of every score, one man or woman knows and understands his or her duty without being told or coerced. Out of the same score, one or two will not do their duty, except under the greatest duress. Of the remaining seventeen, some require but the slightest reminder to do their duty, and the rest require constant reminders of varying force and intensity.

  Yet no ruler has ever had nor will ever have enough administrators and patrollers to stand over those nineteen day in and day out to assure that they obey the laws of the land, support their families or their parents, and wreak no wrongs upon others. How then does a ruler assure that all in his land functions as it should? While the forms of each are many, he has but two tools. One tool is praise and reward. The other is respect and fear.

  Although a ruler must be both loved and feared, it is best that the ruler be loved directly. For that reason, all , praise and rewards must be seen by his people as coming directly from him, while the methods that inspire respect and fear should be seen as coming from his faithful subordinates.

  The requirement to inspire both respect and fear underlies all that a mage-guard is and all that a mage-guard does. For that reason, a mage-guard must always be courteous to all, but unyielding. A mage-guard should also always act so as to preclude any public disrespect of one citizen by another. He or she should be tolerant of all personal differences among the peoples of Hamor, but never allow such differences to result in physical violence between peoples. Nor should a mage-guard permit himself or herself any manifestation of intolerance of the Emperor and those who serve him. Where the Emperor is concerned, in person, deed, or reputation, a mage-guard must always act in a way that is both dignified and that brooks not the slightest hint of physical disrespect or civil disobedience, in matters large or small, for even the smallest signs of such disrespect, if not corrected, can lead to greater disrespect…

  Manual of the Mage-Guards

  Cigoerne, Hamor

  1551 A.F.

  LXXVI

  In the darkness of the small room he shared, Rahl lay on his bunk, his eyes closed, thinking, as Talanyr snored softly. Almost an eightday had passed since Rahl had first sensed a hint of what Taryl felt, but his ability to sense other’s feelings remained uncertain and weak, and those with any sort of shields were blocked to him. His practices with Khaill and some of the other mage-guards had sharpened his weapons skills, but he felt he had been forced to rely on physical cues where once he had sensed intent.

  Why? Why had everything ended up as it had?

  He knew he was fortunate that Taryl had sensed something—extremely fortunate, or he would have died young as a loader, probably killed by a mage-guard when he could no longer contain his anger and frustration. But why had he ended up in Luba? He’d hadn’t done that much wrong—and so much less tha
n most. He’d not understood what using order on Jienela had done, even if he had meant no harm, and from that one small mistake—and Puvort’s nastiness—it seemed as though everything had followed, no matter what he had tried to do to avoid it. He hadn’t had any choice in defending himself against her brothers, not the way they had been prompted by Puvort, and he had delayed no more than two days in deciding to seek mage training. One small mistake and two days delay, and his entire life had spiraled downward and out of his control… and the harder he had tried to find ways to stop it, it seemed, such as trying to understand how order linked to order, the worse matters had become, because all the magisters were continually pressing for him to gain greater understanding of order—if he didn’t want to be exiled.

  Another memory came back to him, of the night when he had enjoyed his first—and still the best—Hamorian dinner with Thorl and Deybri. She had deflected his attempt to enter her house with words about his need to know what he felt with his whole being. He could still see her standing there, her eyes warm and welcoming, yet. sad, saying, “I can’t make promises for you.”

  Deybri… why did she continue to haunt him? There was no way he ever could return to Nylan, and it would be eightdays yet before he could accumulate enough coins even to send a single letter.

  He closed his eyes even more tightly, not that it was necessary in the darkness. After a moment, he forced a long and slow deep breath, trying to relax, and yet to sense each item in the room separately.

  When he had finished the exercise, he was less than satisfied. He could make out the beds easily, and the wardrobes, and the foot chests, but the smaller things were blurs, and once they had not been.

  For all of his recent efforts, all that he had regained of his previous skills was the ability to feel the presence of strong order- or chaos-skills and the ability to sense what surrounded him without using his eyes. He could not even find the order-chaos links that he had twisted to explode the black wall, nor could he create even the weakest of order shields. He could not find the slightest bit of free order or concentrate it or move it.